


Out of Aces

by BloodFromTheThorn



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Blackwatch Era, Blackwatch Jesse McCree, Blackwatch Reaper | Gabriel Reyes, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Young Jesse McCree
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-13
Updated: 2021-01-13
Packaged: 2021-03-18 09:47:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,883
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28741227
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BloodFromTheThorn/pseuds/BloodFromTheThorn
Summary: Of course it was the very first time he was sent on a mission without Reyes at his side that everything went incredibly, hideously wrong – and for all of the devil-may-care attitude Reyes kept telling him would get him into trouble, it also happened to be the first time since he’d picked up a gun and refused to stay down that McCree had the misfortune of being utterly and completely terrified.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 32





	Out of Aces

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from The Gambler by Kenny Rogers, which is pretty much solely responsible for this fic getting written in the first place. That song is an absolute BOP and just try and tell me you don't think of McCree when you listen to it.

After all the shit that came with the rise and fall of Deadlock, Blackwatch was… different, to say the least. So many rules and regulations, a proper chain of command, honest-to-god _missions_ – it was everything McCree had always told himself he would hate more than anything. And, after spending three months as their newest unwilling recruit, he wasn’t entirely sure that he hadn’t been right with that assessment all along.

For starters, Blackwatch was full of the sort of men and women Jesse had been very carefully conditioned to be wary of, and he trusted exactly none of them even an inch. Well, except for maybe Reyes, if he was feeling charitable. The man seemed like good people, and he’d been smart enough to know that if he’d brought Jesse to HQ straight from his jail cell, he would have rabbited at the first opportunity. Instead he’d dragged him out into the middle of Siberia on some puffed up claim of ‘examining his skills’ – Jesse had been in the business long enough to know when he was trading one prison for another, and he hadn’t been impressed by Reyes’ overtures of supposed friendship. Regardless, the exercise had delivered the desired lesson: his life belonged to Blackwatch now, and he would exist only on the terms they set.

It wasn’t exactly pleasant, knowing that he would live and die at the call of others, but it had to be better than being in jail. At least he’d seen enough of Reyes on that trip he could believe the man wouldn’t get him killed just for the hell of it. He was weird about morality like that.

Still, that didn’t mean he wasn’t going to send him out on missions with a team of ex-cons all as likely to kill him if he got in the way as to help him out of a jam should something go wrong. Which, of course, meant that the very first time he was sent on a mission without Reyes at his side was going to be the time that everything went incredibly, _hideously_ wrong – and for all of the devil-may-care attitude Reyes kept telling him would get him into trouble, it also happened to be the first time since he’d picked up a gun and refused to stay down that McCree had the misfortune of being utterly and completely terrified.

He threw himself forwards just as the thundering roar of an automatic rifle sounded off somewhere behind him, landing with a huff and twinging something low in his abdomen with a sharp pinching sensation. Relying on an agility that had saved his life more than once, he was up and moving again before any of his pursuers could gain ground, darting off down the corridor he found himself in and willing his lungs to cooperate with the humid air.

He took another few sharp turns at speed before he had to slide to a stop, stooping to put his hands on his knees and gasp in some deep breaths. There was a stitch tearing a line of white hot pain down the left side of his stomach and he could feel the heat and exertion combining to make him lightheaded, but he shook it off as best he could. He might have earned himself a little breathing room, but if he lingered then his situation was about to get much worse.

Exhausted and feeling increasingly shaky, he took off again, letting himself slip into a slower jog in an attempt to extend his rapidly dwindling energy reserves. It also gave him the chance to try his radio for the tenth time, only to find nothing but more static.

“If anyone can hear me,” he gasped out, on the off-chance the thing was still transmitting a signal, “The charges are set, but I’ve been cut off. I’m looping back around to try and find another way back to the Orca – I could really use a hand.”

As it had the last nine times he’d tried, his earpiece did nothing but hiss a sad stream of static. Honestly he was somewhat surprised it even managed that, what with the bullet that had cut clean through his comm just a couple of minutes after he’d been separated from the group, but given the situation he thought he could probably be forgiven for feeling just a little bit uncharitable.

He took another few turns without slowing down, carefully plotting out his route across the plan of the compound Reyes had forced him to memorise and quietly despairing as his window of escape grew smaller and smaller. He had no idea how the others were faring - from the echoing thunder of gunfire, they likely were in about as much shit as him - or whether or not they’d been able to complete their side of the mission, but his part was done so he was getting the hell out of there. No matter what sense of duty Reyes tried to force into his head, McCree’s priority was always going to be protecting his own hide, the mission be damned. 

Another left turn and then he had to stagger to an uneven halt half a step before he collided with the door he’d desperately been trying to reach. In a stroke of luck thoroughly out of keeping with the rest of his day, the door swung open when he batted wildly at the keypad to let in a gust of hot, humid air, and reveal the rainforest waiting beyond. If he could get to the treeline, the undergrowth should give him more than enough cover to circle around the compound to reach the Orca’s landing ground without running into any of the guards dedicated to putting a bullet between his eyes.

The only problem with that plan was the 50 yard stretch of open space between him and the forest. 

He stuck his head out the doorway uncertainly, every muscle clenched tight in preparation for jolting him back inside if he saw any threats. He couldn’t see anyone, which was good, and there was no immediate burst of gunfire to take his head off, which was even better, but his heart was still jackrabbiting in his chest and he felt distantly like he might pass out. But at the end of the day it didn't matter - behind him he could hear the pounding of footsteps getting closer with every second and if he didn’t move now, he wasn’t going to have the time he needed to get clear. 

He sucked in a hard breath and bent his knees, fiercely ignoring the aching stitch in his side, then threw himself through the doorway like a shot. He tried to keep as low as possible as he darted unpredictably across the open ground, but the few seconds of pause had been just enough for fatigue and ache to settle into his muscles and it was all he could do not to stagger and fall as his legs tried to buckle underneath him. If there had been any enemies lying in wait for him, he would have made for a depressingly easy target; as it was, he got lucky. 

He made it to the treeline just as his pursuers burst from the doorway behind him, shouting abuse in Spanish that he did his best to tune out, forcing himself to keep moving. Every bone in his body was pleading with him to just lie down and _rest_ , but he knew that if he faltered even slightly then it would be the last thing he ever did. 

Away from the buildings and their horrendously-insufficient air conditioning, the heat was almost crippling. McCree could barely feel the foliage brushing against his skin it was so caked in sweat, and his lungs felt like they were slowly filling with water, demanding more and more energy just to drag in air. He had always liked heat, desert born and bred, but the humidity was new to him and he’d decided within a minute of being here that he absolutely hated it; turned out it was about a thousand times worse when he was stuck running for his fucking life. 

At least the trees were doing their job and he had been able to keep moving unhindered. From the way the shouts were gradually getting quieter behind him, it seemed as though they hadn’t been able to pick up his trail yet, which should give him all the leeway he needed to make it back to the Orca and get out of this god-forsaken hellhole. All he needed to do was keep moving. 

The compound wasn’t big, per se, but it was sprawling, tucked carefully into a forgotten corner of the Amazonian rainforest where it could be overlooked by the UN and local law enforcement both, which was all well and good for the terrorists trying to develop new bioweapons, but posed something of a problem for McCree. Hampered as he was by exhaustion, uneven and unforgiving ground, and sheer, blind panic, it took him close to twenty minutes to weave his way around the buildings and stagger back to the clearing where they’d landed. 

At least, that’s where he thought he was. Except-

The Orca wasn’t there. 

He froze in place as he stared at the empty space that should have contained his salvation, brain entirely empty of any possible rationalisations. For a heartbeat he entertained the thought that he’d gotten turned around, and this wasn’t where he was supposed to be but no- there were the scorch marks left on the ground from the ship’s thrusters, the indents where its feet had dug into the loamy earth. This was definitely where they’d landed - but they weren’t there now. 

He slapped at his radio in sudden, fierce desperation. “What the _fuck_ is going on?” He hissed, trying to cover his panic with anger. “Where’s the ship?”

As expected, there was absolutely no answer. He’d been assuming all this time that it was because of the damage to his comm but maybe… The radios did have limited range. A couple of miles, Reyes had told him vaguely, before relenting and digging out the precise effective radius in metres from the depths of an old instruction manual when McCree had pressed for more information. If the Orca had left- Maybe everyone else had too. Maybe the reason he’d been hearing nothing but static was that they were already half-way home. 

_No_ , he told himself fiercely. Reyes wouldn’t stand for that. He might be an uptight asshole in dire need of a good lay or a stiff drink, but he wouldn’t leave an agent in the wilderness to die without very good cause. McCree was sure of it. 

Except, he wouldn’t _need_ to approve of the decision. He wasn’t on the mission and the choice had already been made. All the returning team would have to do is report that they’d seen him get gunned down before they took off and some bureaucrat would happily mark his file as KIA before sealing it away forever. Reyes might not like it but he would have no choice but to accept their word on the matter when there wasn’t any evidence to contradict them; McCree was nowhere near important enough to warrant a body recovery after all. So far as Blackwatch was concerned, he’d died twenty minutes ago and he just so happened to be the only one who didn’t know it yet. 

Well. 

Shit. 

A quiet voice in the back of his head suggested that if there ever was a time to just lay down and die, this was probably it. He was surrounded by enemies and a hundred miles of unfamiliar rainforest, with no way of contacting the outside world. No one was looking for him. His chance of escaping had been basically nil from the moment the Orca’s feet left the ground. 

The only problem was that McCree never had been a very good loser. Pride or stupidity or perhaps just sheer dumb stubborness, he’d never been the sort to back down from a challenge and for all that it had got him in more scrapes than he could count, it had kept him alive so far too. Today might be the day he died, but he wasn’t about to just let it happen. 

He gave himself another minute to catch his breath with straining lungs and let the world fall down around his ears before he forced himself to get it together and come up with a plan. He tried to visualise the satellite images he had pored over during the flight in, mapping out possible routes that might get him to somewhere he could contact Overwatch for extraction while avoiding the terrorists who would no doubt be trying to hunt him down. If his memory was to be believed, the closest place he was likely to get international communications was a little place called Tepequém, but that came with a certain amount of risk - it was on the Brazillian side of the border, and while his Portuguese wasn’t awful, he certainly didn’t sound native. If he could stick to the Venezuelan side he’d find it much easier to blend in; his Spanish, at least, was every bit as good as his English. 

That left him with Icabaru, a tiny settlement that would likely welcome an unknown newcomer with intense suspicion, but did have a small airport he might be able to book passage with. If he was to have any hope of making it out of the rainforest alive, getting there as fast as humanly possible was his best chance. All he needed to do was keep heading North East until he hit the Icabaru River, and then follow it all the way into town. 

Simple. 

Of course, before he did any of that, he needed to get out of the compound. He couldn’t have been stood still for more than two or three minutes, but it was enough time that the distant shouting had grown alarmingly closer. No doubt they’d have figured he was trying to get back to the Orca and had headed in that direction, which meant any second now they were going to stumble over him standing there like an idiot. It was time to go. 

Fortunately, he had one hell of a distraction lined up in the form of the detonator he still had tucked carefully into his belt. He’d been under orders to set the charges around the central lab and then detonate once everyone was safely back on the Orca - the latter might not be possible, but he’d already planted the explosives and now seemed as good a time as any to put them to good use. With foresight that seemed to go beyond even Reyes’ impressive abilities, they’d landed the Orca out of the possible blast radius in case they’d needed to blow early and that conveniently meant that McCree was free to flip the switch, count to ten, and start pounding dirt in the same instant the world behind him went up in smoke. 

He didn’t stick around to find out how much damage the C4 had done, or how the terrorists were reacting to the immense amount of damage he had just wrought. Instead, he stuck his head down and ran as fast as his legs could carry him straight into the jungle. The ground was uneven and covered with thick, twisting tree roots that threatened to send him sprawling with every step and even after the short rest he still wasn’t breathing right, but he did everything he could to get as far away from that place as physically possible.

He was distantly aware that he wouldn’t be able to maintain his speed for long - a combination of the huge distance he still had to travel, his total lack of resources, and the energy he had already had to expend on this mission meant that he needed to be economical with his remaining stamina, but for the moment, speed was of the essence. Once he was out from under the terrorists’ bootheel he could switch to a steadier pace, but his first priority had to be earning that distance. As he hauled in too-warm air, he mentally cursed himself for any time he’d even thought about skipping out on endurance training. Sims with Reyes were a fucking bitch on a good day, but every one of them would help to keep him alive, and that fact had never been more apparent as it was then.

If he’d had to guess, he would have said he kept going for around thirteen minutes before he had to admit defeat and slow down. He hadn’t heard any sounds of pursuit once the general chaos of the compound had drifted out of earshot, but he hadn’t been careful about his trail and it wouldn’t take too much tracking skill to make out his path through the trees. Still, he’d bought himself a lead, and that was at least worthy of a small reward: slowing to a stop, putting his hands on his knees, and gasping for breath like a beached whale. 

He was trembling with the exertion, sweat dripping down his face and stinging his eyes, and he could feel the uncomfortable blaze of overheated blood in his cheeks as his body desperately tried to cool itself down. He decided right there and then that if he ever had a say in it, he was never coming back to this fucking rainforest ever again. Reyes could chew him out all he wanted, he’d done his time. 

Exhausted as he was, he was still critically aware of the time ticking away, his window of safety slipping through his fingers like sand. He needed to keep moving. 

With a last, wheezing breath, he tried to push himself up from his slumped position, then instantly flailed as the muscles across his stomach seized in vicious, sharp pain and his knees turned to water beneath him. Instinct had him grasping at his side where that stitch was _still_ refusing to subside and felt- 

Wet?

For a heartbeat he felt a surge of concern that he had apparently been sweating so much his shirt was sodden with it when he had no drinking water to replace the lost fluids, but he banished the thought entirely when he pulled his hand away and saw the dark red staining his palm. 

_Shit._ A quick fumble revealed that the pinching pain he’d assumed was a simple stitch was in fact a gunshot wound just beneath the edge of his body armour that had punched a hole straight through his side. The bottom half of his shirt and his left pant leg were already both black with blood, which went some way to explaining the lightheadedness he hadn’t been able to shake, and _oh yes,_ also meant that he was almost certainly going to die. He had no equipment and nigh on fifty miles of inhospitable jungle to cross before he so much as thought about getting medical attention - even uninjured, it had been a long shot at best. Now- He was well and truly fucked. 

He wanted to screech with rage at the unfairness of it all, but he wasn’t quite hopeless enough to want to draw his enemies right to him. Instead, he did the same thing he had done when he’d arrived to see the Orca gone: he took a deep breath and tried to think through the problem. He had a pressure bandage tucked into a pouch on his belt, which would at least stop him from losing even more blood than he already had. One problem down. 

Pain would be a factor he needed to consider, even if his adrenaline had kept him marvellously shielded up until now. He didn’t have any meds to help him, which meant he was just going to have to tough it out, but he needed to allow for the fact it would slow him down. Okay, that was the second problem at least accounted for, if not solved. 

Dehydration- Dehydration. Well. Maybe he’d stumble across a stream that didn’t look _too_ full of parasites or horrible tropical diseases he didn’t know the names of. 

It wasn’t an escape plan so much as it was a ‘make this chase last so the bastards really have to work for it’ plan, but the sentiment felt largely the same. If McCree was going out, he was going to do it in style thank you very much: being as big of an inconvenience as it was humanly possible to be. 

He slapped the pressure bandage over the wound, faintly grateful there wasn’t also an exit hole to take care of, did his best to rearrange his body armour so its weight was pressing down on it too, and forced himself to start walking again. He damn near bit through his lip to withhold the cry of pain that wanted to escape as his nerves started to come back online to inform him that yes, there was a hole in his gut and yes, every inch of him was deeply, _deeply_ unhappy about it, but he didn’t slow down again. 

Bleeding, hurt, and entirely alone, McCree walked into the jungle and didn't look back.

* * *

Some combination of the oppressive heat and blood loss worked to render him largely insensate within a few hours. He kept moving through sheer force of will, but he knew that if it came to a fight he’d be dead long before he hit the ground - as it was, he could barely keep his eyes open to see the path ahead of him, let alone keep a lookout for possible pursuers. If anyone found him, he’d be an easy target. 

In an attempt to preserve his strength, he’d sacrificed a more comfortable swaying gait in place of a hobbling limp that allowed him both to keep his off-hand pressed firmly over the bandage and to put minimal pressure on the leg threatening to falter with every step. It hurt a lot more this way, jolting as his movements were, but it would keep him upright for longer and that was all that really mattered. Maybe he’d even be able to get far enough away from the compound that Overwatch would eventually be able to recover his corpse. It probably didn’t much matter either way, but it was somehow nicer to imagine a proper grave instead of being pecked apart by the local wildlife. 

Of course, the universe had to keep things interesting, so it’d also decided it was time for him to come down with a splitting headache, as if he didn’t already have four thousand other things to deal with. Rational thought let him know that it was almost certainly the result of critical dehydration - minimal fluid intake in hot weather exacerbated by exertion and extensive bleeding was _not_ a fun time, he had come to learn - but he was feeling pissed off enough to blame cosmic forces beyond his control. On the off-chance there was a god, it wasn’t like this last minute spitefulness was going to be what tipped the scales on the balance of his soul after all - he’d been a murderer by 15 and Blackwatch was hardly in the business of absolving its members. 

For the most part, however, his gradual trek Eastwards was really just _boring._ He’d learnt early on in his criminal career that nothing was ever like it was in movies, that there was a lot more downtime than anyone would expect and that heists were a lot more about planning than they were about flying by the seat of his pants, but he still somehow hadn’t expected this. He hadn’t liked to think about his own death much at all, but if pressed he probably would have hoped for a blaze of glory, something hard and fast and colourful. This- 

This was anything but. 

He staggered a little as his foot caught in some of the vines tangled together on the forest floor, hissing when it pulled sharply at his wound. The bandage appeared to have put a pause on most of the bleeding, thankfully, but that was about all he could say for the state of things. God, what he wouldn’t give for a drink. 

Just as the thought occurred to him, he registered a nagging feeling somewhere on the edge of his senses that had been trying to get his attention for some time: the distant sound of running water. It didn’t sound like much and he was still faintly aware that he couldn’t trust any natural waterways he came across, but he was also rational enough to know that if he didn’t replace his fluids soon, he was going to hit the deck and stay there. Dirty water was better than no water. 

Pinpointing the noise when he was half out of his mind with fatigue was a challenge in its own right. He turned his head from side to side to try to identify the source and only really succeeded in making himself even dizzier than he had been before, the world threatening to give way beneath him before he snatched at the nearest tree to keep himself upright. He took a few deep breaths to try to steady himself, ignoring the way it made his wound ache, and performed a much slower assessment of his surroundings. His best guess was that the water was somewhere ahead of him, which was fortunate, though he knew he hadn’t travelled far enough for it to be the Icabaru River, which was less good. 

Still, progress was progress, look on the bright side and all that. With a pained wheeze that he pretended was a frustrated sigh, he returned to his uneven hobble. 

Moving as slowly as it was, it took him a good ten minutes to reach the gentle stream he had been hearing. As soon as he saw it his heart sank; the water was moving and it was definitely too small a stream to be housing any crocodiles or whatever the local equivalent was - he was sure that had been part of Reyes’ briefing too but his memory of anything outside of the moment in which he found himself was getting pretty hazy - but it was almost entirely overgrown with plants and algae and just looking at it screamed _bad idea._ Part of the noise he had been following wasn’t even the water at all, rather the steady hum of the insects fluttering around it. If McCree ever did make it out of there, he had no doubt that every inch of bared skin would be a mess of bites and he found himself suddenly deeply grateful that most insect-borne diseases had been wiped out years ago. 

He hesitated for an unknowably long moment, swaying uneasily on his feet as he desperately tried to assess the situation. He’d been learning to weigh up probabilities and risks and chances long before Blackwatch ever dragged him out of the desert screaming, and this should be no different. Running low on blood and cripplingly dehydrated, it suddenly seemed a lot more complicated than it ever had before. 

Ultimately, that was his deciding factor. If he was too out of his mind to make a goddamn decision, then he needed water ASAP more than he needed to worry about possible contaminants. 

Of course, that was around the time he realised that actually drinking the water was going to be a lot more difficult than he’d initially anticipated. With the ever increasing agony that was his entire left side, stooping to scoop up some water was not an option and he was aware that kneeling down to do it carried the very real risk of not being able to get back on his feet. Fortunately he didn’t need to worry about making any more decisions; his knees made the choice for him when they buckled without warning, sending him sprawling and nearly dunking him face-first into the stream. As it was, he ended up with a grazed palm and water up to his elbows, alongside the utter agony that came from jolting his side. At the very least it put his face in a convenient position to choke down as much water as he could stand before vomiting without the need for any extra movement. 

All in all, he was going to count it as a win. 

Once his thirst had started to retreat back into the depths from whence it came, he flopped onto his back and took another moment to consider his gameplan. The good news was that no one had found him yet, which likely meant they either weren’t searching for him - unlikely - or they didn’t have dogs to trace his scent right to him - possible. If it was the latter, that gave him a little more time to work with, but he was well aware he wasn’t moving at anything like the speed he would need to outpace them all the way to Icabaru. Not that it was likely to matter for all that much longer regardless - even with the drink reviving him somewhat, his head was still fuzzy and the tips of his fingers had started to tingle unpleasantly with numbness. Severe blood loss was likely going to get him before anything else in this fucking jungle did. 

Again he considered the idea of just staying where he was. The ground was soft enough and the bubbling of the stream was a pleasant background hum. He could do without the bugs, in all honesty, but moving hurt an awful lot and when he kept still he could almost pretend that his side wasn’t housing its own personal bonfire. 

Out of nowhere, a memory rose to the surface of his mind from wherever he’d managed to bury it: the image of Liz’s face flickering red beside a campfire, the light glinting off her wide smile as she sang along to the guitar in Jesse’s hand. He couldn’t remember the song, not entirely, but one line drifted back to him, oddly melodic in Liz’s sharp voice, _‘It’s beefsteak when I’m hungry, and whiskey when I’m dry; greenbacks when I’m hard up and hell when I die.’_

When they were first starting out, Liz had always liked singing obscure Western songs - said it added to their aesthetic, whatever that meant, and Jesse had been young and dumb enough to go along with it. No harm in having a bit of fun, he’d always figured. Much later, when Deadlock started getting serious and things got a lot more quiet, he’d surprised himself by finding that he missed it. Strange that it should come back to him now when he hadn’t thought about it in years, though he couldn’t deny it seemed fitting. Hell was almost in arm’s reach. 

With a will he hadn’t known he’d had, he forced himself back onto his feet. He wasn’t even sure why he was bothering - he didn’t have a chance of making it out - but something fierce in him refused to just give up and die. Walking would at least give him something to do while he waited for the reaper to come.

* * *

Against all the odds, he managed to keep himself moving for another hour or two before his strength finally failed him. Night had come on, plunging the forest into shadows that seemed to lunge at him with every step, and it didn’t take long before he put a foot down wrong and ended up on his ass. Once he was down, he knew that he wasn’t getting back up again, not this time. His entire left leg had given up on supporting him hours ago and his right was trembling with the strain, while both his arms had been steadily growing more and more numb as his body desperately tried to restrict his blood flow. Even in the darkness, he could see how pale and grey his normally tan skin had become. 

With a bit of shuffling and a bit of cursing, loudly, with great feeling, he found himself propped against the wide trunk of a tree, tilting his head back to look up at the canopy far above him. This was it then - this was what brought him down. A thousand things in this jungle out to kill him and he was going to slip away quietly in the dark because of blood loss, of all things. Fucking brilliant. 

There was at least one positive of giving up: now that he wasn’t moving any more, the pain had started to slip beneath the numbness trying to claim him. Everything felt heavy and disjointed, but the agony was finally, _finally_ starting to wash away. It wasn’t much, but at least it gave him a little peace. 

_“Well well, what do we have here?”_ A voice asked snidely from beside him. _“Lookin’ a little rough there cowboy.”_

Whether a result of fatigue or familiarity, McCree didn’t flinch at the sudden noise. Instead, he tipped his head to his right and blinked slowly at the woman sitting beside him. 

“Been a while Liz,” he greeted in return, utterly undeterred by her presence. Half-dead or not, he knew a hallucination when he saw one - even if there had been any possible, rational way for Ashe to really have been there, her hair would never look that put together in this humidity. He almost smiled at the thought. 

_“You dyin’?”_ She didn’t sound concerned. 

“Probably.” His voice was a thin rasp, likely indecipherable to anyone not conjured up by his own imagination. “You stickin’ around?”

_“When the great Jesse McCree shuffles off this mortal coil? Damn right I’m stickin’ around to watch. Folks would pay to see this, Jess.”_

“You should sell tickets.”

She laughed, bright as a bell and twice as mean. For all the years he’d known her, he’d never once been sure if she actually gave the slightest shit about him. He thought she might have cared, deep down, in her most tender moments, but it was hard to trust that instinct when she spent every other second of the day treating him as she did everyone else around her: like they weren’t worthy of being the dirt on her shoe. Maybe she’d known that it was that spark of hope - or maybe just plain curiosity - that kept him around. 

“Just another worm on your string, huh?” He murmured. He couldn’t feel his legs anymore. 

_“You could’a just_ asked _me y’know? We used to talk, didn’t we?”_ She looked sad for a moment, before her expression crumpled into a grin. _“You remember all those fireside chats, don’t you? Tradin’ secrets in the dark. I was the only one you told about what happened to your mama.”_

He did flinch at that, as much as his dying body was able. One of his more fierce regrets, that one. “Should’a kept my mouth shut. Should’a known I couldn’t trust you.”

_“I never told anyone else.”_

“Didn’t mean you kept it safe.”

She laughed again, and McCree felt faintly sick. Of all the images his mind could rustle up in his final hours, this was what he got? Maybe Hell wasn’t so far away after all. 

_“‘Course it’s me, Jess. Who else was it gonna be? You ain’t got no one else.”_

True enough. Everyone else he knew was either dead, an enemy, or a barely trusted comrade from Blackwatch, and even they’d abandoned him in the dirt to die. There was no one out there that gave a shit about him. “Jus’ my luck,” he breathed, struggling to draw in enough air to speak. His lungs had started to feel rooted in the earth beneath him, too heavy to shift. “Piss off Liz. Let me die in peace.”

_“You ain’t known peace a single second of your life Jess. Peace was never what you were lookin’ for.”_

He let his eyes slide closed, suddenly uninterested in staring at the forest that was going to become his grave, or the woman who might once have been his family. If he thought hard enough, he could almost imagine that the warm air on his face was a gentle desert breeze, that he could smell sand and woodsmoke instead of leaves and decay. He hadn’t realised just how much he had missed it, how deeply his bones longed for the desert that had raised him, no matter how shit his childhood might have seemed to anyone else. Sure it had hurt and it had been hard and he’d had to crawl his way out of pit after pit, but it had been his and his alone. For better or for worse it had made him. 

Unconsciousness tugged at him, but only softly, the way a mother might lead her child by the hand. It felt welcoming in a way few things had in McCree’s life, but he resisted just a little longer. Just a few more minutes to think of home before everything went dark for good. If he was waking up in hell anyway, what was it going to matter?

Barely awake as he was, it was something of a surprise to realise he could still hear something, and even more so to realise that what he could hear was not the general noise of a rainforest going about its day that he’d been tuning out this whole time. It sounded like- engines?

Curiosity more than anything had him cracking his eyes open against his better judgment, flinching against the sudden bright light that had appeared above him. Scarcely alive and delirious with it, his first thought was that it was an angel come to collect his soul, right up until that light shifted and he was able to see the size of the craft it was attached to - unless angels were really thirty foot long carrier crafts, that definitely wasn’t it. Shouts filled the air over the sound of the roaring engines, indecipherable against the whipping wind and general haze bearing down on McCree’s higher brain functions. Probably the terrorists finally catching up with him now that they’d finished putting out the fires he’d started. He was savagely grateful he’d be dead before they could get any satisfaction from him.

It was strange though. He could have sworn one of those voices sounded like Reyes.

* * *

He came awake slowly at first, then all at once. The quiet, everyday noises that came from people moving about suddenly jumped from a distant awareness on the fringe of his consciousness to a threatening proximity, and his eyes popped open with a shout. For several confused, distressed seconds, his eyes refused to adjust to the blinding lights above him, and he could do little more than flail as blurs of colour suddenly appeared beside him, shouting too quickly for his muddled brain to process. It was all too loud, and too close, and he didn’t know where he _was_ -

A dark blur suddenly pushed past the others and a dry warmth enveloped both of his shoulders to hold him down. 

_“McCree_ ,” a deep voice said firmly, “ _Calm the fuck down. You’re back at HQ, you’re safe.”_

He’d never be entirely sure if it was the fact he recognised the voice as someone to be trusted, or a simple primitive reaction to the sheer authority Reyes was capable of wielding without even noticing, but he instantly felt the fight bleed out of him. He dropped back down onto what he now realised was a biobed like a puppet with its strings cut. The majority of the strange blurs around him - doctors, his rational brain supplied - faded back into the background, but the dark one stayed right where it was as his breathing settled down again and sensation started to rush back in the wake of his blind panic. 

Everything _hurt._ As soon as the pain started reporting in he wasn't sure how he'd ever felt anything else, how he had possibly found the strength to try to fight his doctors. His chest ached with every breath while his legs and arms cramped so viciously he thought they might break with the force of their shaking. Worst of all though was his stomach - what had once been the quiet, agonising burning of a bullet wound was now a steady blaze all across his torso, setting his muscles quivering and consciousness threatening to spiral away from him again.

This wasn't right, surely. He was back at HQ. The doctors had biotics and drugs and fucking magic or whatever - he'd never been clear on the details but he knew it had never hurt this badly once Overwatch's medical team got their hands on him.

 _"Shit,"_ he hissed, more to himself than anything, then startled when there was a quiet chuckle beside him.

"Yeah, that about sums it up."

He fought to get his eyes open again - when had he closed them? - and made himself blink until the dark blur beside him took on a decidedly Reyes-like shape. 

That- didn’t make sense. 

“Wha-” He tried, then immediately abandoned the attempt as his desert-dry throat constricted like a snake and he was left half-gasping, blinking tears from his eyes. Reyes, apparently deciding to take on the role of the mother hen he certainly wasn’t, was there in an instant, jamming a straw into his mouth and holding a cup steady as McCree gulped down water as quickly as he could. Too soon, the cup was withdrawn. 

“Steady,” Reyes cautioned lowly, “You’ve already vomited more than enough in the past three days to last you a good few years. Any more and you might tear something.”

McCree had absolutely no recollection of throwing up, but it made as much sense as anything else that was happening so he let it go with nothing more than a frown. He was far more interested to know why he wasn’t dead in the jungle somewhere. 

“Wha’ happened?” He managed, rasping. 

Reyes’ brow darkened like a storm cloud, his mildly concerned demeanour immediately falling back behind a wall of fury. If he hadn’t been so exhausted and aching, McCree would have flinched in the face of it. “A lot of fuck ups is what happened. After the team split up, everything went to shit; Kilmarragh got taken out by a sniper and Wen got clipped in the shoulder. When they lost contact with you too, they gave you up for dead and figured it was time to abort. Beat feat back to the Orca and took off.”

He cut himself off, chewing over his own rage for a moment. For his part, McCree could kind of see where the others had been coming from, even if he was going to beat their asses for leaving him behind. Shit news about Kilmarragh though - he’d been one of the nicer ones. 

“Wen’s fine, by the way,” Reyes said after a long moment, though McCree hadn’t asked. “Doc patched him up no trouble. You were a little harder to stitch back together.”

“How’d you know to come for me?” If the others had reported him as dead, there would have been no reason for Reyes to suddenly take off in search of him. He and Kilmarragh should both have been worm food in unmarked graves by now. 

The anger returned full force. “Your radio might have been fucked, but the comm itself was still ticking. You wouldn’t have been able to do anything with it, but the tracker showed you were moving. The rest of the team should have seen it straight away but they were so busy trying to save their own skins they didn’t bother to look. Once they got back I had a look at your signal and figured no terrorist was going to loot your comm and then walk twenty miles into the jungle for no reason.”

That made sense, he supposed. It also went some way towards explaining why Reyes was so pissed, although McCree was surprised by the intensity of it. He’d known the man wouldn’t stand for lives being wasted without reason, but this went above and beyond simple annoyance at wastefulness. 

“The mission?”

“Completed, more or less, thanks to you. I’m assuming you are the one who set off the explosives?”

He considered nodding, then found it too much effort. “Needed a getaway.”

Reyes’ grin was sharp. “Figured. Well, you did a hell of a number on the place. Once we picked you up, I had a secondary team sweep the compound again with some more firepower to back them up, just in case. Took out any stragglers still clinging on. Between the lot of you, the cell’s completely gone.”

McCree mulled that over for a few minutes, trying to push down the pain threatening to overwhelm him and trying to focus on the good news. The mission had been a success, in a roundabout sort of way, and he’d even lived to tell the tale, although he was still a little hazy on the how of that.

“Didn’ think you were comin’,” he muttered, not really meaning to say it until the words were already between them. They sounded too vulnerable by far, but it wasn’t like he could claw them back now. 

Worse still was the way Reyes’ face went soft with surprise, a genuine reaction instead of his usual bullshit ‘authority’ face. “Of course we came. The team shouldn’t have left you in the first place.”

“They didn’t know any different.”

“Then they should have done. McCree-” He cut off whatever he was about to say, glancing around the largely empty medbay before leaning in to put them much closer. “I’ve never tried to pretend that our lives aren’t at risk when we’re out on missions - it comes with the territory. But that doesn’t mean everyone has a blank slate to throw their teammates to the dogs when it suits them. We work together for a _reason_. What happened out there- It never should have gone down like that.”

“Shit happens boss, you don’t gotta-”

“ _McCree_ ,” He cut in sharply, “I’m trying to apologise here. Kindly shut the fuck up?”

 _Oh._ Jesse blinked in surprise, shocked into silence more than cowed by the supposed reprimand. Reyes was _apologising_ to him? _Reyes_. The man who held Jesse’s life in his hand and was free to put him down literally whenever he pleased. That man. What on earth had happened in the time he’d been out?

“The only way Blackwatch stands a chance of getting anything done is if we can trust the men and women at our back. I’m not asking anyone to be friends - god knows, you lot get into trouble more than enough as it is - but I _do_ need you to work together. Even if I’m not there. Venezuela was… It was everything Blackwatch shouldn’t be, and you ended up half-dead because of it. I’m sorry for that.”

McCree was good at reading people, but Reyes had always been a bit of an enigma, too good at hiding his emotions and too quick at reading others to be caught off guard. In that moment, it looked like he wasn’t trying to hide a thing, earnestness and apology shining bright in his eyes as he held McCree’s gaze. In the face of it, he could do little more than nod in acknowledgement. 

Fortunately for McCree’s inability to handle real sincerity when it was thrown his way, neither of them were particularly good at bearing their emotions and Reyes didn’t protest when he diverted the conversation. “You said three days?”

The Commander hummed. “You don’t remember any of it? Not surprising really. You were pretty out of it. When we picked you up, you were severely dehydrated and your blood pressure was so low the doc was worried about your organs starting to shut down. Some biotics fixed up the bullet wound and a few transfusions got your fluids back up for a bit, but then you started vomiting blood. Managed to get it all over the floor of the Orca about half an hour before we landed back here. Scared the hell out of- well, _everyone_ , honestly.”

That certainly sounded alarming, not least because he’d been sure the bullet hadn’t been anywhere near his internal organs. He hadn’t taken any other hits that he could remember. “The fuck?”

Reyes snorted, apparently much more amused about the entire affair now that McCree was back safe and reasonably sound. “Turns out you picked up a bug out there. Raised some hell all through your gut before the docs were able to figure out what it was and could start treating you, by which point it had taken root. You’ve been on pretty heavy meds to flush it out - that’s why you’ve been out so long. It’s also probably why you feel like you’ve been kicked by a horse.”

As he spoke, he reached out and tapped one of the screens by McCree’s bed; a moment later, there was a flush of cold in his left arm and the pain of his gut was wiped away in one smooth sweep. He breathed out a shaky sigh.

Reyes looked like he had something to say about that - possibly berating him for not mentioning that his pain had clearly been as bad as it was - so McCree headed him off. “A bug? What kind of bug?”

“Schistosomiasis,” Reyes said shortly, looking like he knew exactly what McCree was trying to do. 

McCree blinked at him. “Skisto- what?”

The Commander dropped his head in apparent exasperation, but he was still smiling softly so the effect was lost. When he looked back up, his expression conveyed nothing but warm relief. “Schistosomiasis. Snail fever. Congratulations kid, you have a parasite. Well,” he acknowledged with a tilt of his head, “You _had_ a parasite. The docs have been dosing you for days to make sure it’s all out of your system.”

“I had _snails_?” A part of him was distantly horrified at the news, but the vast majority was still feeling pretty mellow from the painkillers so he couldn’t muster up more of a reaction than mild surprise. 

“ _No_ , you idiot. You had flatworms. It’s spread by snails. Needless to say you’ve thrown a wrench in the works without even trying - the disease was thought to have been eradicated from South America thirty years ago. You’re the first new case in decades.” He gave him a second to mull that news over with another of his classic I-can’t-believe-I-have-to-put-up-with-your-bullshit looks, then continued. “Let me guess: you didn’t have a canteen on you and you were so dehydrated, you thought it would be a good idea to take a quick swig from a stream somewhere.”

He twitched his head in a vague approximation of a shake. “Knew it was a bad idea. Did it anyway.”

Reyes sighed, heavily and with feeling. “Of course you did.”

“I was trekkin’ through hundred degree weather and I was down several pints of blood. I figured most tropical diseases would be slower movin’ than severe dehydration.”

He was right and they both knew it, so Reyes did nothing more than huff in exaggerated annoyance, casting another glance down McCree’s body as though to reassure himself that he really was still breathing. It was kind of- touching, in its own way. Weird, for sure - McCree had grown unfamiliar with other people expressing an interest in his wellbeing - but- nice. Really, really nice, if he thought about it too closely. 

He tried to shake himself. It must be the drugs, making him woozy and sentimental, that’s all. 

“You should get some rest _mijo_ ,” Reyes told him, softly this time. His eyes were steady and sure and despite the fact that he must have a mountain of work piling up on his desk, his body language screamed that he was going exactly nowhere. Whatever his rationale or his guilt, he’d planted himself firmly at McCree’s side, and there he was going to stay for the foreseeable. “It’s late and you’re still shaking off the last of the antiparasitics.”

“Been sleepin’ for days,” McCree muttered sullenly, but even he could hear how his voice was fading with fatigue. In truth, he felt like he could sleep for another week and not break a sweat. 

Reyes snorted, amused. “Yeah, because you had to go and get yourself infected by an extinct parasite. Go the fuck to sleep McCree.”

“Yessir,” he slurred, letting his eyes slide shut of their own accord. It was only as he was drifting off that he registered what Reyes had called him: _mijo_. Maybe it was just the drugs making him sentimental, or some weird Stockholm reaction to the man pulling his ass out of the fire in such spectacular fashion, but he could just about admit to himself that maybe he kind of liked it. Maybe loved it, even. Maybe had been waiting most of his life to hear someone say that to him with any kind of affection. 

So, Blackwatch was _different_ from everything that had come before, but perhaps it wasn’t _all_ bad. 

The last thing he was aware of before sleep rose up to claim him was the gentle, warm weight of a hand smoothing back his hair. 

**Author's Note:**

> Okay three things: 1) Yes, that reaper pun was 100% intentional and I am PROUD of it. 2) The song McCree remembers is Jack O'Diamonds, which may feature in another McCree thing I'm writing.... 3) This was originally supposed to be a very different sort of story? I don't really know what happened but I sat down to write a sad fic about a young McCree who gets abandoned and then has to mentally deal with that nightmare whilst badly injured and then what actually happened was I wrote this. I like this less than the story I originally planned, but this is what I've got, so. Maybe I'll do a rewrite at some stage?


End file.
